Once I was a clever boy learning the arts of Oxford... is a quotation from the verses written by Bishop Richard Fleming (c.1385-1431) for his tomb in Lincoln Cathedral. Fleming, the founder of Lincoln College in Oxford, is the subject of my research for a D. Phil., and, like me, a son of the West Riding. I have remarked in the past that I have a deeply meaningful on-going relationship with a dead fifteenth century bishop... it was Fleming who, in effect, enabled me to come to Oxford and to learn its arts, and for that I am immensely grateful.


Sunday, 24 August 2025

An early fifteenth century mitre from Switzerland


The online Liturgical Arts Journal has splendidly illustrated article about very impressive meter which appears to have been commissioned in the years 1414 to 1420 by the Abbot of Kreuzlingen. The abbots had been granted the privilege of wearing pontifical vestments by Pope John XXIII, and the then abbot, Erhard Lind, appears to have wasted no time in commissions a mitre for himself and his successors. 


The mitre is a rare survival, and an indicator of what the well-attired prelate would want to be seen waring in the time of the Council of Constance. The Council itself met in the neighbouring city to Kreuzlingen, which lies on the lakeside but across the land border in Switzerland.

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